


let my soul with their souls find peace, and forget what is done and undone

by Dialux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ...with a lot of feelings attached, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Multi, Pre-OT3, Threesome - F/M/M, also OT3 but it takes its own sweet time getting there, and even more politics, set after s6 but with major revisions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-10 00:29:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12900105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: “You love him too, I think,” Satin says, quietly. Sansa twitches, but keeps quiet. “I wouldn’t wish to keep that love of him, m’lady. I didn’t come here to warn you away, rather closer.”[Jon x Satin x Sansa, during and after the battle for the dawn.]





	1. my life is bitter with thy love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlestardustcaught](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlestardustcaught/gifts).



> All titles are from either "Anactoria" or "Hymn to Proserpine" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
> 
> This began as a series of typos that I laughed about with @alittlestardustcaught, and slowly morphed into a smutty oneshot about Jon x Sansa x Satin; this, in turn, grew into an s7-s8 redux that... is slightly terrifying me, tbh.
> 
> Premise: Littlefinger’s killed before the beginning of the story; the Northern lords named Jon king in return for his promise that the North wouldn’t surrender its freedom under him; Jon’s trying to find people to throw at the Walkers until he can figure out a way to end this menace; everyone’s pretty sure that this won’t, in fact, work, and they’re just going to end up dead.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 ****(Jon hadn’t _meant_ to.

That’s how any song they ever sing of him will begin, in all likelihood: Jon Snow hadn’t meant to find himself knee-deep in snow, but he’d followed his uncle easily enough beyond the Wall; Jon Snow hadn’t meant to fuck his wildling lover, but he’d loved her and found her too enticing amidst mounds of frozen earth; Jon Snow hadn’t quite meant to fall into this-  _arrangement-_ with his steward, with his  _half-sister-_  but he’s here anyhow.)

 


	2. let life burn down, and dream it is not death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Oh,_ he thinks he hears, before his eyes close; this time, the voice is aching with pain, softer than it’s been for weeks. _Oh, my grief._

********It starts with a candle.

Or, no; before that- when Sansa falls asleep over the records, head resting on the pages, small fist pressed against her mouth. It’s been weeks since retaking Winterfell but she’s still too thin, hollowed-out, overly different from the girl that Jon had once called sister. 

Sansa falls asleep, and Jon can’t find it in himself to grudge her that rest, or try to move her. If there’s one thing he’s learned of her, it’s that Sansa can be more stubborn than Arya, Robb,  _and_ Rickon combined if she puts her mind to it, and when she feels her pride has been trampled on, Sansa tends to put her mind to it. And she’s had dark circles ringing her eyes for all the weeks they’ve met, from their first night at the Wall when Jon’d had nightmares because of  _her_ appearance. It had made a startling contrast against the dank emptiness that had been his dreams up until then, which is why he remembers it, but his worry remains.

Jon sighs, instead, now, and leans back in his own chair. 

They’ve settled into a nice rhythm here: past dusk, seated opposite each other in the common solar of the Lord and Lady Stark, going over records, consulting each other quietly. It’s quiet and  _nice,_ beyond all else that he’s ever considered before.

And if it feels too domestic- if he feels a flash of warmth, whenever Sansa smiles at him over the top of her papers- it’s the stirrings of a base-born man who’s known little of a woman’s touch in his life, even less of a woman so well-bred as Sansa. 

Nothing more.

He might have ignored it, Jon thinks, he might well have ignored all of those stirrings and those warmths and those kindnesses. He might have done a lot of things. 

But the gods have always hated him.

And then- Satin brings the candle into his chambers.

...

It’s Satin’s damn  _job_ to bring those candles in.

He’s to keep stock of the stationary the Lord uses, the inks and quills and papers and, yes, candles. And Jon’s a good man to serve, Satin knows; he doesn’t truly have a head for the finer nuances of penny-pinching, but that’s where Sansa enters.

Sansa.

Lady Sansa.

She’s not quite like many of the ladies that Satin’s seen, though there are times when she feels like any of them, like all of them. But Sansa’s pretty, with fine-lined cheekbones and a shining sweep of hair that he’d think dyed on anyone of less high birth. And she’s  _kind,_ that’s what’s even more surprising: sweet, for all that her silences can be as cold as the Wall itself; generous, for all her insistence on lords’ fealty to the Starks; and kind, for all that she’d not hesitated to feed Ramsay to his own hounds. 

She makes a good match to Jon, which Jon might have realized earlier had he not been so invested in those White Walkers. 

(Jon gets... single-minded, Satin’s realized. It’s his job to soften things up. To smile at the world when Jon seems so invested in the Army Of The Dead and tell the lords or the servants or the smallfolk-  _no, sorry, m’lord’s busy right now, he’ll... probably not remember you but I promise that if you take it up with Lady Sansa-_ yes,  _that’d be wonderful, I’ll put in a word with her-_

It’s him and Sansa who’re doing the ruling, while Jon raises the armies, is the point. And Satin’s seen quite a bit of Lady Sansa over these past few months, working in tandem beside Jon while still managing to butt heads over the most inane points-  _gods,_ they’d once spent an afternoon shrieking at each other over some fish-barrel Sansa’d imported from the Stormlands-

But whatever else, Sansa’s good at ruling, and Jon’s good at leading, and Satin’s good at getting ink in the middle of the damned winter, so they make a good team.)

“Satin?” 

Satin looks back and tips his head forwards, shoulders bowing enough to qualify as a bobbled-bow. It’s the compromise they’ve reached between themselves: enough to satisfy both their senses of priority.

“M’lord.” He lifts the candle- it’s a thick one, long, made of better-quality wax than the kind they’d bartered from Torrhen Square. Satin had won it off a bet the previous night. “Where’d you like this?”

“Just- set it down,” says Jon, waving at Sansa’s desk. 

He looks weary, Satin thinks. He looks wearier than he’d done walking out of those ice cells, and he’d looked like he was halfway to the Stranger then.

The darkness is taking a toll on all of them.

“M’lord,” Satin says, slowly, when he sees the ragged cut of Jon’s nails, made less by a clean blade and more by gnawing teeth. “M’lord, is... everything fine?”

And Jon- fool that he is- only lifts a brow. “There’s an army of the dead arriving,” he says, dry as the wine Sansa so enjoys.

“I only  _meant,”_ Satin begins, hand gesturing slightly- 

-but he’d forgotten, he’d  _forgotten,_ he holds a candle that’s twice the size of any other candle he’s ever held, and the delicate pile of papers on Sansa’s desk go crashing to the floor when his candle knocks into it.

Satin might have forgiven himself for that, but the soft  _fwump_ of papers falling onto the flagstones makes Sansa lurch sideways, graceless as he’s never seen before; her sleeve catches on the corner of the desk but she jerks anyhow, the cloth ripping loudly in the abrupt silence of the room. When she looks up, there’s a line across one cheek from the abrupt drag of her face against the wood, rubbed raw and red.

But it’s her eyes that catch his attention: large, and blue, and terrified.

And unseeing.

“Sansa,” Jon mutters under his breath, before rising, stepping around both of them to lean down next to her, hand cupping her cheek.

She flinches away. Jon goes still at that, his shoulders pulling tight. There’s a long breathless moment, stretched taut with words Satin can’t quite pull into being- and then he, too, steps forwards, the anger-despair in Jon’s spine propelling him those few steps; Satin places one hand square between Jon’s shoulderblades and the other on Sansa’s shoulder.

“Lady Sansa?” he ventures, slowly. There’d been a woman in Oldtown who’d been like this, sometimes, when a customer was over-rough. Satin had once sat in the sunlight with her, popping dried apricots into his mouth until his tongue blistered. He’d rather liked that woman. “M’lady. You’re- you’re in Winterfell, now, m’lady, you’re safe. You- d’you remember? Your brother- m’lady-”

Sansa shudders out of the rabbit-caught stillness she’d been in, her shoulders hunching up to her ears and face staining a shade just a little duller than her hair. Jon, too, moves- or- something- something similar. Satin feels the vibration through his palm, flat on Jon’s back, but there’s no outward sign of it. 

“You should’ve woken me,” she says, voice quiet, voice rough. An edge that reminds Satin of screams, of- of not-quite-screams, of screams swallowed before they were every allowed to  _be_ screams.

Jon doesn’t move.  _Fool,_ Satin thinks again, though this time it’s with admittedly more fondness. “You’ve not been sleeping well.”

“Yes, well,” says Sansa, “clearly that’s not going to be remedied by sleeping on desks.”

“I’m-” Jon pauses, checks himself, sighs. “I’m sorry.”

She leans back, pulling away from Satin’s fingers just enough that it can’t be an accident- far enough to look Jon in the eye, not far enough for Satin to let go. She’s slotting her masks into place again, Satin realizes; masks and smiles and courtesies, all of them to divert from the true girl under it all.

“Whatever for?”

“I scared you,” he says, flatly.

At that- there’s another, longer, moment of silence. Her face pulls tight.

“Jon.”

“You should rest,” Jon says, with the almost-impatient cadence of repetition, and rises to his feet. Satin’s hand drops fast. “I’ll speak to you in the morning.”

He leaves, and Satin’s left touching a woman who’s lovelier than any other he’s ever seen, a woman who has masks enough to make the Faceless Men envious.

Satin’s other hand still feels warm, warm from the heat of Jon’s back. He curls it into a fist and brings the other to his side and bows, and when he leaves he doesn’t look back at all.

(This is a lie. He does, just a glance over his shoulder when he reaches the door; and he sees Sansa staring into the guttering flames of the candle next to her- her eyes are dark, and heavy-lidded, and her hand is cupped over the shoulder he’d been touching, fingers running over the bare square-inch he’d brushed.

Satin wonders, at it. How long has it been since someone just- just touched her? Without cruelty, or wanting. Simply to comfort  _her.)_

Looking back, Satin ought to have known. 

He never has been able to resist broken things. Even less beautiful ones. And less than that, brave ones. And if Sansa Stark is anything at all, it’s brave and beautiful and broken.

...

Sansa doesn’t sleep that night.

She doesn’t dream of Ramsay often; even then, when she does, it’s usually of the way his blood painted Winterfell’s mud under Jon’s fist, the pad of his dogs before tearing into his flesh. Of course the one time she dreamt of his hands on her skin it was while in public.

But it shakes her, more than anything else. Ramsay’s hands on her skin, the way he’d tended to rip the blankets off her and then rip her clothes off her and then- and then- her  _skin._

_Breathe,_ she tells herself, but it doesn’t  _work,_ she can’t- 

She stands, and belts her nightdress together, hands aching for something to do; she’s almost at the door when she sees the jug of wine she’d stored in her chambers almost a sennight previous. She pauses only briefly, however, and reaches for it; and when she swallows two mouthfuls, she feels a slow warmth light in her belly.

There’s a curse on the tip of her tongue for her foolish mind, but Sansa swallows it instead, running a hand through her hair. These nightmares don’t come often, but they’re often enough to leave her hesitant to sleep. 

It’s really been her memory of Robb that’s provided courage- how he would have laughed, and lit up all the candles in the room to ensure there wasn’t a speck of fear inside her chest, and likely slept beside her until Sansa finally kicked him out herself. And when even that fails, she has Arya inside her head. 

_She’d have slapped me until I fainted,_ Sansa thinks wryly, tugging the sleeves of her nightdress further down, against her cold wrists.  _And then she’d have told me that she was more frightening than any monster I had inside my head, so as long as she was there I’d have nothing to fear._

Arya’s not here now, and neither is Robb, but Sansa carries them inside of her like they were sunken into her ribs and heart. Her dead aren’t quite dead, and they won’t ever be. Not so long as she lives.

Sansa sighs and turns to the window, inspecting the sky critically. 

_Dark, but not too dark._

Jon’s taken to studying Sansa with worried eyes. He thinks he’s subtle, Sansa knows, but the rub is that he’s  _not;_ Jon and subtlety tend to go together as well as a Stark in the south or a Baratheon on the throne. And the care with which he treats her when he remembers how damaged she is- it’s irritating, more than all the other annoying habits he’s picked up over the years. 

They’ve fought, the two of them, over what must seem utterly inane in retrospect- Jon’s clothes, Sansa’s sleep-habits, one time that Jon refused to treat one of the lords with enough courtesy- though they’ve fought over harsher, more important things as well, and that louder.

Admittedly, Sansa’s sleep has been one of their longest fought battles, even if it isn’t one of the most vicious. If he knows that she didn’t sleep for the full night, he’d as like as lock her in her rooms as not, and Sansa doesn’t think the nightmares will fade at all if he does so.

But the night sky is tinged with grey, so Sansa has hope that she can just pass it off to any people who see her as getting up early, not  _not_ sleeping at all.

A few minutes later, she’s creeping down the hallway to her solar, taking care to avoid the looser flagstones and hollow areas- if her knowledge of Winterfell hadn’t been good enough in her childhood, she’s learned it well enough when the Boltons held it. Jon’s room is next to the solar, all but attached; Sansa must be careful to ensure she doesn’t wake him. The doors are thick, yes, but it always pays to be more careful than not, as Sansa’s learned.

Just because she cannot find sleep doesn’t mean that Jon must waken as well.

She slips inside, silently, and closes the door as gently as she can, only relaxing when the lock’s tumblers settle without any corresponding shuffle in the adjacent rooms. Then she turns around, and all the care in the world wouldn’t be enough to stifle the shriek that climbs out of her throat when she sees a wavering flame hanging in mid-air.

Sansa’s fingers close over the handle, heartbeat jackrabbiting in her chest, all but ready to slam the door open.

And then she realizes: it’s Satin, not wearing his customary black cloak but in a brown jerkin that’s almost the exact shade of the paneling. With his back to her and a candle held aloft, the solar still not-quite lit, it’s not exactly surprising that she hadn’t realized that there was someone there.

“Oh,” she says, pressing a hand to her neck, trying to lower her voice from the octave it’d jumped to, “Satin, it’s you.” A breath, in and out, whistling in her lungs. “I don’t- what are you doing here?”

Satin stares back at Sansa, eyes wide. “Cand-”

Before he can finish the sentence, the door on the far side of the solar bursts open. Jon flings himself through it half a breath later, brandishing a dagger that she’s seen only in one man’s keep, and Sansa blinks at him for a long moment. The large-bladed, long-handled knife catches the light, and she feels the shock shift, abruptly, to anger. 

Anger at Jon, who makes it damn easy to be angry at him anyhow.

“You took Littlefinger’s dagger,” she accuses.

“You shouted,” he replies.

“I didn’t expect anyone to be in here,” Sansa says levelly, drawing herself up. “But then, I didn’t expect  _you_ to enter either.”  _That, I think, is a lie. But it’s not like_ you  _need to know that, is it?_  What she says doesn’t matter all that much, with Jon; what matters is how she says it- the tone, the rhythm, and body language. Sansa lets censure hone her voice, now. “Least of all like- this.”

Jon’s cheeks suffuse with a color that makes him look younger. It’s a good look on him: his hair cuts across his over-sharp jaw, and the color softens his face even further, and the light in his eyes is bright enough to make her chest ache a little, faint memories of their childhood coming together to remind her of him laughing, sometimes with Robb, sometimes with Arya, bright as children still innocent of the horrors of the world.

He cuts his eyes over to Satin, who’s frowning determinedly at the far wall as if it’s done him an injustice, and flushes further, painfully red. 

Her toes curl in her slippers, something hot and brilliant coiling in her belly.

“I was- worried,” Jon bites out.

“For  _what?”_ Sansa asks, tipping her arms wide. “We’re inside Winterfell, Ramsay’s gone, Petyr’s gone, what more-”

“-you  _screamed,”_ he says.

“I did not,” says Sansa, almost insulted. 

It hadn’t been a scream. A yelp, a shout- but she hadn’t  _screamed,_ not really. Certainly not loud enough for Jon to hear through his door, not unless he were...

_Oh,_ she thinks, a vicious sort of triumph flitting up her throat like a flame’s heat.  _Oh, Jon._

“You were awake,” she says. 

Jon frowns, and then he sees her face, and he pales. “No,” he says. “No, no. Be quiet. I wasn’t-”

“You were,” says Sansa, the anger quickly being replaced by delight. “You haven’t been sleeping, I  _knew_ it!"

“Sansa,” he hisses.

“Jon,” she mimics, before quirking her lips. “Don’t you dare lie to me.”

His hands clench. “I’m not lying to you,” he tells her slowly. 

Sansa pushes away from the door, stepping closer to him. One step, and then two, and then three- each foot closer feels dangerous, but not as it’d ever been with Ramsay; less like she’s balancing on a knife’s edge and more like she’s on a high wall with a net strung to catch her if she were to fall. Still  _frightening-_ but not- not too much.

The firelight flicks over his eyes, shadows sharp over most of his face; over all of him, truly, all but the gleaming flats of his cheekbones. 

“Yes,” Sansa tells him, her braid loose over her shoulder, nightgown loose over her pale skin. It’s too  _dark,_ damn it all, she can’t quite see what he’s looking at- but she sees the bob of his throat as he swallows, and it’s that single motion that gives her the courage to step forwards once more, close enough to brush his arms if she just extended her own: the idea that Jon’s throat is as dry as her own, for reasons neither of them is willing to explore. “You are.”

“I’m  _not,”_ he whispers, but she can see the way he pulls away, even as she comes closer; Sansa can  _see_ it, and she’s not half so blind as to think that it’s for anything other than the heat low in her belly.

“Sansa,” Jon sighs, again, but this time she thinks there’s resignation there as well- and it makes triumph flare like a falcon’s spearing wings inside her. 

But then- but then-

Satin coughs.

And Jon jumps, wild as a startled deer, away from her and whatever delicate confession she’d almost wheedled out of him.

“M’lord,” calls Satin, startled all on his own-  _oh, be quiet,_  is all Sansa can think, likely with too much of a spiteful edge- “M’lord, I didn’t mean to-”

The far door slams behind Jon. Sansa braces herself on the table, the edge digging into her palms. Satin starts towards the door as if to follow him.

“Let him go,” she says, biting back the sigh crawling up her throat.

Satin halts, looking between Sansa and the door, conflicted. Sansa looks up at him, and releases the sigh anyhow, before jerking her chin at the door- effectively dismissing Satin.

Alone in the study, she glares at her hands, sleep a far memory.

“Coward,” she says.

Sansa’s not quite certain who she’s branding such.  _Perhaps,_ she thinks, the petulant part of her still awake and baying-  _perhaps it’s all three._

...

_The Wall fell,_ the note reads, in a script too jagged to be written by someone who could truly write. It’s the cut of a quill made by unused hands, and it makes dread seize in Jon’s lungs, in Jon’s throat, in Jon’s mouth.

_Please help us._

Written by an illiterate person, begging for assistance against an undead enemy- 

_I’m coming,_ Jon thinks, and when he announces it that night, the hall doesn’t say a word against him.

The hall doesn’t, but Sansa does.

Jon remembers the slope of the ‘l’ in the note, slanting together as if leaning for comfort. He can’t forgive Sansa for daring to put him above the land she’s sworn to rule, and so he meets her flint with his own flash, and-

Well.

Is it any surprise that there’s a fire?

...

“M’lady,” says Satin, before pulling away hastily at Sansa’s cool, arched brow. “I- I’d like to speak to you, if I could, in private.”

Sansa’s mouth curves into something that only just apes a smile. “We’re rather busy ensuring the King has all he needs to leave.” 

“Tonight, then,” Satin says, immediately. “Please, m’lady.”

She pauses. Then: “Yes. Tonight.”

Satin’s a mess, for the rest of the day; he stutters through half his meetings, remembering the way Sansa had looked up at Jon, the way Jon had stared back down at her, the flicker of Jon’s pale eyes towards Satin before he turned heel and fled- 

_Fuck,_ thinks Satin, fisting his hands in his tunic. They’re so  _pretty,_ the both of them, and he can’t stop imagining the play of firelight across their skin, the way Jon’s face would flush like roughened silk, the bend of Sansa’s waist against those scarred fingers.  _I’m a selfish bastard for this, mayhaps._

_Selfish, yes, but content._

He spends precious minutes trying to find the courage to knock on Sansa’s door- but Jon is going to leave on the morrow, and Satin’s leaving with him. If Satin loses his nerve, he’ll lose it all, and all before it even forms as well.

“Lady Sansa?”

Sansa doesn’t speak when he enters, instead choosing to study him closely. Satin looks back frankly, and he wonders if there’s ever been anyone in the lovely lady’s life to care that she has a patch of freckles on the side of her neck, a constellation almost like the Seven Sisters in the sky. Likely not, and that’s as great a tragedy as Satin’s ever known.

“You wished to speak to me,” Sansa says, finally.

“Yes.” Satin coughs. “I meant- that is- I thought-” her brows climb higher with each stutter, make his heart pound a little harder. But Satin’s not going to lose his mind to shame, not before he’s spit out what he wants. There’s every chance he’ll die within the fortnight, and he thinks he deserves to know what Sansa’s answer would be. “I’ve seen it, you know,” he says, holding her gaze until he feels like he’s drowning. “How you look at Jon.”

_And how he looks at you._ But he bites back those words, mostly because Sansa’s face goes- not whiter, not precisely; Satin can’t tell exactly what changes in her face, only that there’s a strained cast to it, all of a sudden, despite her still-arched brows and disapproving eyes.  _Did you think you were hiding it?_

Perhaps to someone who wasn’t in constant, daily contact with both of them, but Satin’s definitely not one of those people.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Sansa says, so evenly that had Satin not been sure of himself, he’d likely have been convinced. “He is my brother, yes. And I’ve precious little family left, so I’ll forgive you for your ignorance-”

“M’lady, that’s not how any sister looks at a man she calls brother.”

Sansa smiles thinly. “I’ve lost all my family save Jon, and he’s as like as not to lose himself to those thrice-accursed dead. The way I look at him is the way a woman resigned to being alone looks at her last blood, Satin.”

_So you’ve hidden it from yourself as well._

“You love him,” says Satin.

“Of course I do.” Her smile seems to grow teeth, just a hint. “He is my brother.”

For a long moment, Satin cannot find the words. Then he straightens further, pleads every inch he can out of his spine, stares directly into Sansa Stark’s stubborn face and says, “I love him.”

There is silence around them, like the quiet before a blizzard. Satin can see the surprise flood Sansa’s face, along with the smaller, pettier emotions; he can see the way her jaw clenches, the pulse of her heart along the skin of her neck.

Satin hadn’t known that himself, not entirely. But it’s the truth, isn’t it?

(There had been a customer, back in Oldtown, who’d been- gentle with him, in the fashion of a man who thought himself generous and utterly capable. He’d returned time and time again, trying to find a purchase in Satin’s heart; each time, with a different object. 

Flowers, at first, and then satin, and then jewels.

On their last night together, before he’d had to return to Essos, the man had slowly, thoroughly fucked him into the bed, and then, as they laid together, he’d whispered of the hundred names the Lyseni tongue had for love.

“Brother and family and lover,” he’d said, “and a hundred more besides, which I can’t ever remember- but- you’ve captured my heart, little Satin, over all those types, in a hundred different ways.”

Satin never saw him again, and never truly cared either way.)

He’d always thought there was exaggeration, to say  _I love you_ in a hundred different ways, but- Satin thinks about it, and he  _does,_ he loves Jon as a brother in arms, as a king, as  _his_  king; he loves Jon deeper than he’s ever loved anyone else in his life, and it’s not least because Jon would never demand that love of him.

Satin loves Jon, with all the ways that he’d never known himself capable of. 

For little more than a heartbeat, Satin feels the yawning, terrifying depth of those truths- then he shoves it aside, and faces Sansa, and wonders if this is enough to break her of her masks.

“If you love him,” she says, then, and Satin thinks her hands are clenching beneath the desk, out of sight- “and you think  _I_ love him, as well, what is this? An attempt to- to convince me to leave well enough alone? Or-”

_Ah, poor lady, you have been hurt far too much, to think me so cruel. I’m afraid that I’m not so selfish as to demand that of you- though I_ am  _selfish enough to demand the both of you._

“You love him too, I think,” Satin says, quietly. Sansa twitches, but keeps quiet. “I wouldn’t wish to keep that love of him, m’lady. I didn’t come here to warn you away, rather closer.”

“I don’t understand.”

_Do not lose your nerve_ now, Satin orders himself.  _You’ve come this far, just- tell her the rest._

“We could,” he says, hesitantly. “We could- there are ways. For all three of us. Together.”

Sansa pales further, instead of the flush Satin had hoped for. 

“I think you should leave,” is all she says, before she reaches for the papers in front of her. Satin hesitates, and her eyes flick from him to the door, blue and almost electric in their intensity.

Slowly, Satin bows out of the room.

...

Sansa doesn’t sleep that night, either.

_Perhaps Jon is right,_ she thinks, her fingers drumming against her legs.  _Perhaps I ought to speak to a maester about this._

But speaking to a maester would be akin to admitting defeat, and Jon’s stung Sansa’s pride enough that she knows she won’t back down before he does. 

The rest of the hall had let Jon walk away, after he announced his intentions. But Sansa- Sansa’d stared for a full minute before throwing down her napkin and fleeing after him- and they’d fought again, after that, with words and thrown papers aplenty. The world might well be content with Jon throwing himself into danger after danger, escaping by only the slimmest of margins, but Sansa certainly won’t lie down and accept that.

_I’ll drink a sleeping draught after Jon swears never to seek out the dead, and not a moment sooner._

That decided, she closes her eyes, and resigns herself to another night of staring at the canopy, anger and fear a hot mess in her chest.

It doesn’t come, though. What does come is a vision that leaves her feeling too tight for her skin, the same twist in her belly that had come when she almost confronted Jon: a vision of Jon, and Satin, and the contrast of their hair-  _not too much, not enough at all in dim light,_ Sansa decides,  _but during the day..._ -and their skin, too, one tawny and the other pale, though she doesn’t know which one is which; and their bodies- one muscled, the other thin, one sharpened, the other softened, and still, somehow, both lovely.

_The three of us,_ Satin had said, ducking his head, looking so bashful that no one would ever imagine him to give such a bold suggestion.  _Together._

But he’d looked at her, and he’d told her that he loved Jon, and Sansa can’t think of anything more bold than that. She isn’t so bold herself. 

And still, somehow, for some reason, the image won’t leave her mind.

_Gods damn it all to hell._

She’s angry, yes, angry like she’s never been before in her life. Jon  _does_ make it easy to be angry at him, because he doesn’t really defend his decisions; he only makes them, and those who wish to fall in line can, while those who don’t leave. It’s how it’s been with him ever since he left Winterfell- perhaps even before, it’s not like she knows all that much of how he was treated then- but Sansa’s not going to leave, and she’s not going to shy away from throwing Jon’s decisions in his face either.

_I love him, and I’m going to make sure he survives if I have to break the world for it. Call me selfish- I don’t care. Not anymore._

Sansa digs her fingers into the muscle of her thigh. For the first time in days, she feels a plan brewing in the back of her mind- a desperate, terrible sort of plan, but a plan nevertheless.

_I might be selfish,_ she thinks, and closes her eyes, remembers the shadows ringing Satin’s thin face.  _But I think I know one person who wouldn’t care either way._

Call her selfish, but Sansa won’t hesitate to use him.

Not if it means bringing Jon back.

...

Jon hadn’t expected Sansa to come meet him.

They haven’t spoken since she yelled at him; Sansa’s avoided him so expertly that Jon hasn’t been able to find her, much less speak to her. But when he starts harnessing his horse, Sansa appears besides him- she looks tired, her skin parchment-thin and Jon wonders when she last got a good night’s sleep- but they’ve only got a few more minutes together, and he’s not going to let their last words to each other be so petty.

“My lady,” Jon murmurs.

“My lord,” Sansa returns, courtesy polished to a honed edge.

She bows, stiffly, and some of her hair slips over her face when she does- it’s not in her usual braid, and the free locks look even brighter now. Abruptly, Jon’s seized by a rush of-  _something-_ something rich and deep, that makes him want to reach out and brush his fingers over her- her face, those sharp cheekbones, the joint of neck and shoulder that looks so soft, that thick hair. Reason asserts itself a moment later, but the damage is already done: Jon can feel his cheeks heating, and in the middle of the courtyard, mere moments before he’s to ride out, he feels utterly foolish.

“I bid you fair travels, and fortune enough to return to these walls in good health.” Sansa doesn’t smile at him- she does that very rarely, and usually when she does it’s because she’s furious, not when she’s happy- but her face does soften, and her eyes brighten, and she looks as unabashedly beautiful as she’d once looked all those years ago before the Lannisters rode North.

“I thought you’d not miss me,” Jon replies, and cannot stop the wry smile curving his lips. “I’ve seen little enough of you over the past sennight.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Sansa says airily, before stepping closer to him. Her voice is far quieter, though no less sharp, when she says, “I want you to come back, do you hear me? No matter what, no matter how desolate it seems out there- you’re not going to stop fighting. You’re going to come  _back.”_

“I’ll certainly try,” Jon replies.

Sansa looks as if she might hit him- and, yes, admittedly, Jon could have been less flippant with his response- but Sansa takes it even harder than he’d expected of her. Her lips curl, and her eyes narrow, and every inch of her goes as rigid as a board. “I don’t care how hopeless you feel it is,” she grits out, eyes blazing. “You’ll swear to come back, right here, right now. And- Jon?”

“Yes?” Jon asks, warily.

A good precaution, as it were, because Sansa looks as if she’s spoiling for a whetstone for her tongue, and Jon’s the nearest target.

“You’ll hold to these vows,” Sansa says sweetly. 

Someone who doesn’t know Sansa very well might not have realized the venom in that tone, but Jon knows her very well indeed. Jon might have broken some vows, but-

“Sansa,” he says lowly.

She sighs, just a little, and unbends enough to reach out and catch his hand. “I didn’t mean that. Or, I did, but- not that way. You know how I was in the south, Jon, how lonely it was- and I came North, and after I met you it was- I wasn’t alone. At least for a time.”

Which Jon might very well end, with his untimely death.

“If it were up to me,” Jon says, gently, “we’d be in Essos, or perhaps Ulthos, and the dead would not be our problem at all. But they crowned me their king, and you are the only Stark in Winterfell now.”

“We will survive,” Sansa says. Her eyes shine, for all that the rest of her face looks calm. “The Starks endure, and you are as much a Stark as I am. So you’ll come back to me, do you understand?”

She steps forwards and embraces him, so abruptly that Jon can barely respond; and then she steps away just as fast.

“Yes,” Jon says finally, helplessly.

Sansa nods, a spearing motion that looks at once triumphant and resolved. Then she turns, eyes sweeping over the courtyard until she finds- Satin, and strides over to him, gripping Satin’s elbow hard enough to dent the leather vanbraces he wears. Sansa leads him away; they bend their heads together, not a few feet from him, and Sansa says something to Satin that makes him pale.

But they’re too quiet for Jon to hear, so he’s reduced to watching them- the steward he’s grown to rely on more than is likely healthy, or good for the kingdom; the sister who’s his last family in all the world.

_Eight millennia, and a bastard and a girl are all that is left._

Somewhere up above, the gods are laughing at them, Jon’s certain of it.

Finally, Satin seems to agree to whatever Sansa asked of him. They return, but both look grim. Grim and resolute as well, which is a dangerous combination- Jon remembers that feeling well, before he fled Ygritte, before he let the wildlings south. Actions undertaken when feeling this particular emotion can make the stuff of legends, Jon knows.

The stuff of legends, or the stuff of eulogies.

...

_Save him,_ Sansa’d said.  _If you love him, even half as much as I- save him. At the cost of everything, if necessary. Your men’s lives, and the Night’s Watch’s lives, and your own life, if it comes to it; they are none of them-_ she’d hiccuped, a little, before forging on with the sheer stubbornness that must have been Stark, for Jon had it as well- _you will bring him back here._

_And why should I?_ Satin had responded. 

That still haunts him. If he’d said something else-  perhaps  _no,_ or  _what you ask is a selfish thing,_ or even  _what will you give me in return;_ but Satin did not, and Sansa drew herself up instead, and she said, more royally than anything Satin’s heard in his life:  _For you love him, and you know his worth, and you know Jon Snow to be a better man than most any other you’ve seen in your life. And because you pity me, and if you let him die you will have to contend with my grief when you return._

My grief, Sansa’d said, and it echoes in his every bone like a cursed thing.

It echoes and echoes and echoes, and when Jon remains inside the Wall even as it crashes down- Satin’s first impulse is to run, when the crack forms across the wall of ice.

_MY GRIEF,_ Sansa’s voice thunders over him, rolling even louder than the terrible sound of Brandon Builder’s Wall crashing down-  _MY GRIEF!_

It is a song, and a chant, and Satin draws himself together to the beat of it. 

He dives into the Wall, and when they escape, the two of them- the last thing Satin sees is red, spattering over the snow. It looks like Sansa’s hair.

_Oh,_ he thinks he hears, before his eyes close; this time, the voice is aching with pain, softer than it’s been for weeks.  _Oh, my grief._

...

 “M’lady!”

Sansa steps out onto the ramparts, and she sees a sight that makes her heart skip a beat.

Ghost stands right beyond the walls, two bodies slung over his back. There’s snow frosted along the two bodies, light and glittering. The image imprinted along the backs of her eyes, however, is of the scarlet stain dribbling down Ghost’s sides.

_No._

It’s hours later that Sansa comes back to herself. She has a vague sense- slightly- of screaming, both orders and quieter sobs. But Jon and Satin rest inside the walls, now, and they’re no longer in danger of dying from their wounds as they’d been when they first arrived.

_They both almost-_ almost _died._

There had been so much blood. Frozen blood, crusted blood, dripping blood. Sansa had never known the human body could bear that much blood. Sansa had soaked straight through three layers of wool and linen, and her skin still feels cold with it.

_Jon almost died._ Her hands are still stained with his blood. He’s a fool, Sansa knows, but she hadn’t ever thought him so utterly brainless. Half their army is gone in an attempt to save more men than  _returned-_ and the gods only know how long it will take Jon to regain consciousness.

Until then, Sansa is the sole ruler.

And she has bargaining chips aplenty.

“Get me a piece of parchment,” she orders the man who’s taken Satin’s place as steward- who’s far less capable, in all truth. 

He nods. “And a washbasin, my lady?”

Sansa hesitates. But the blood is still wet on her fingers, and the desperation will look good on parchment. The Targaryens understand blood, according to all the stories. And if the Dragon Queen believes Sansa to be more desperate than she actually is-

Of all the things she’s learned from Petyr, the foremost among them is to keep the truth a close thing.

“No,” she says. “Just the parchment, if you please.”

...

Satin wakes.

This is something he hadn’t entirely expected- without blood loss addling his wits, he realizes that the redness splattered across snow was blood, not Sansa’s hair- but even more importantly, he’s  _warm,_ and Jon’s there in the same room- he’s asleep, or so Satin suspects; there’s a blanket thrown over his shoulders, and bandages peeking out from underneath it, the linen just a few shades lighter than Jon’s skin.

Jon is alive, is the point.

“You’re awake,” a voice says, sounding surprised. Satin tries to turn his head, but his neck twinges sharply, and he desists. A moment later, Sansa steps forwards out of the darkness shrouding the entryway. “Don’t get out of bed.”

She comes closer, placing a wooden bowl on the table besides him and dipping a cloth into it. “The muscles were sprained,” she says, by way of explanation. “According to the maester, that is. He said-” Sansa breaks off, before she turns and approaches him with a cloth. Satin shies away, as much as he can with a sprained neck and a still-aching body.

“You’re  _not-_ I’m a-” 

_What lady tends to a-_

“Steward, yes,” says Sansa. “And a bastard besides.”  _I ought to be glad she didn’t call me a whore as well, I suppose,_ Satin thinks bitterly. “But you’ve done more for my family than most any other person I can think of, and I  _am_ quite grateful for that.”

_Wait, what?_

Sansa quirks her lips at him, and she looks far too beautiful; Satin can’t help but think he’s still in the middle of a fever-dream, because gods only know how many of the dreams have ended up with him grievously wounded, a lovely woman tending to said wounds-

It’s the pain, in the end, which convinces him it isn’t a dream.

“That you survived is a miracle,” Sansa says softly, brushing a stinging liquid along his brow. “Had Ghost not been there- had it been any colder, or any warmer for that matter- you’d both have died.” Her hand pauses at his elbow, where it had rested in the courtyard, before Satin left. It’s soft, and warm, and gentler than Sansa’s ever been in his presence before. “What happened there, Satin?”

He shudders, hands fisting in the coverlet across his knees. “We got to the Wall easily enough,” Satin murmurs, steadying his voice when it threatens to break against Sansa’s touch. “He left me at Mole’s Town, and went on ahead to the Wall to convince some o’ the men. It... they were tryin’ to leave, almost there, when the Walkers came.” 

He shudders, again, shoulders jumping. Satin’s spent so long training that lowborn-Reach accent out of his words; turns out it only takes some fear to bring it back.

And  _gods,_ but the fear is there inside of him even now: of the Wall, which had felt more frightening than death even as he raced inside it; of the darkness, which had swallowed him whole in his desperate search; of the cold, which had frozen and shattered his blade even before he met a Walker.

“Jon was fighting them.” Blade almost glowing, a blur of silver around him as he stood in a pile of bodies. “He hadn’t known how to get out- was going in the opposite direction- so I helped.” Satin had been sure, bone-sure, that they wouldn’t get out. When the light finally emerged in the distance, he’d almost cried with sheer happiness. “It was right terrifying.”

“We heard of the Wall falling,” Sansa says quietly. “Do you know what Jon did- what  _anyone_ did to-”

Satin shakes his head. “No,” he replies, eyes flickering over to the pale figure asleep on the bed. “No, m’lady. I had to bring him back, and I did it. I know nothin’ more of all of it. The Wall fell, and I was sure we’d die even after we go’ out, ‘cause there was no way we’d get any distance- both of us wounded, barely able to walk, no supplies.”

Sansa nods. “And if Ghost hadn’t found you, you would’ve died there.” Then she tacks her lips up in a faint smile, or a faint attempt at a smile. “You did more than I ever hoped for, Satin. It’s why you’re here: I didn’t want you to wonder how Jon was, when you awoke.” The smile fades, replaced by a far more genuine look. “And I didn’t want to tend to the two of you in separate rooms. Time would be wasted in simply walking back and forth, wouldn’t you say?”

“So,” says Satin, simply to clarify- “you put me in the same room as the king.”

“No,” Sansa says. Satin’s brows furrow, and she smiles at him, pleasantly. “Do not tell this to Jon until I’m there, but he’s not king any longer. Or, rather, he is; but only until I receive a raven from the south.”

Satin hauls himself upright so fast his neck cricks. “You spoke to them?” he cries.

Sansa looks as if she’s readying to answer, but before she can, a voice croaks from the far side of the room:

“Traitor.”

Horror rises up Satin’s throat, along with a flood of words; but Sansa reaches out and rests a long-fingered palm on his knee, stopping his words; then she closes her eyes. When she opens them, there’s only resolve in them. 

Resolve, and an anger deeper than any sea Satin’s ever seen. 

He knows then, with the surety of a man trained to judge other’s emotions: this fight between Sansa and Jon will be more vicious than any other they’ve ever fought, and Satin’s caught right between them both, with no way to move at all, not even to twist his neck.

...

“You’re certainly one to talk.”

Jon closes his eyes. He hadn’t thought- 

_I thought you could be trusted._ But if Sansa’d done what she had just told Satin, and if she’d set events in action that threatened their entire realm...  _What other word is there for it than traitor?_

“I am your king,” he says wearily.

Sansa tosses her hair, surging to her feet like a twisting column of flame. “And did you think the realm would rule itself when you slept? The North needed a ruler, and I was de facto head.” She lifts her chin. “Half our army is gone. Our food stores are almost disappeared. What more can we lose, before we lose our lives as well?”

“Doesn’t look likely that we’ll have that, either, for overlong,” Jon retorts, through the pounding headache behind one temple. “‘Twas a condition of the lords, wasn’t it, Sansa? That we never kneel to the south? And now you’ve brought the south’s attention to us.” He bares his teeth at her. “One army we might have dealt with.  _One_ threat. Not both!”

“So you think one threat will ignore us while the other is dealt with?” Sansa demands. “The living, the dead; once we finish dealing with one we’ll have naught but ashes for the other. Better we make them allies. Better we treat with the one threat that is reasonable, and even better to do so before we’re cut off at the knees with all we’ve lost.”

He grits his teeth. “The lords won’t like it.”

“Oh, what will the lords do?” she asks. “Hide in their homes until they’re swelling the Night’s King’s army? After what happened to the Umbers, they’re all too scared to do even that.”

_"I_ don’t like it.”

Sansa’s face shadows. Then she turns to Satin. “Tell him how close he was to death,” she orders, before turning reproachful eyes back on Jon. 

Satin hesitates, and then he says, a little brittlely, “You were rather close to death, my lord.”

“Rather close?  _Rather_ close!” Sansa looks as if she were trembling from the force of her anger. “Your face was blue, and you’d both spilled so much blood that it was frozen to your body! I had to cut it off with a knife, and pray that I wasn’t skinning you while at it! And as if that weren’t enough-” 

She cuts herself off, face white.

“As if that weren’t enough?” Jon inquires, as politely as he can, his own temper heating.

“I have ruled the North while you played  _games_ against these dead,” Sansa whispers, and when she steps closer to him she looks just as bright-eyed and terrifying as when Jon left, eyes blazing like a dozen stars all sunk together. “But no longer. What need have we of a king so lost in one threat that he forgets all others? Better a queen with an army behind her, no matter the price.”

Jon swallows, hard, and drags himself further upright. 

_Coups should be more obvious, I think._ Jaime Lannister had struck Aerys down as befitted a mad king. There should be more to a king losing power than a darkened sickroom and a skull-bandaged steward and a red-eyed young woman.  _But then, I was never a proper king._

“And that queen shall be you, I suppose?”

Sansa manages to bristle further. “What army do I have?” she demands scornfully. “No. I sent for the Targaryen Queen. Three dragons, and enough horselords to make Cersei quail- it’ll be enough, hopefully.”

Jon thinks he knows what Sansa’s not saying, though:  _If it won’t be enough, it scarce matters; we’ll all be dead._

“How did you send it?”

“Ser Davos made a good messenger.” Her lips thin when she sees his disapproval. “He knows Dragonstone best of all the people here. I suspect he’ll return within a few days.”

Satin frowns. “M’lady,” he says, quietly, “if the Dragon Queen’s got any worth to her name, she’d’ve captured Davos.”

Sansa inclines her head. “Yes.”

“He’s not likely to escape.”

“Ser Davos knows Dragonstone better than all the people here,” Sansa says neutrally. “He also knows Dragonstone better than the people currently residing there. If he sticks to the shoreline he won’t be captured by the queen, not even if she were to ride her dragon and scour the sea. And once he reaches the Vale, it won’t be too difficult to ride north.”

_And she thinks_ me  _a fool?_

“Even if he escapes,” Jon says, “do you think the Queen won’t know where he’s headed?” 

_She’ll burn us in our beds, and if she doesn’t- by some miracle- we’ll have to give away everything_ you  _fought so hard for._

“She’ll come here,” says Sansa, before smiling, thin and small. 

“And you’re not frightened by that,” Jon says flatly.

“Oh,” Sansa murmurs, the smile growing wider, dangerous as a wolf’s bared teeth, “I’m rather counting on it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter's title: why wilt thou follow lesser loves?


End file.
